Note: Contains over 211,000 words, according to the count (using MS-Word) of the Project Gutenberg ebook version. Includes the often separately published "The Ghost of a Hand".

Synopsis: Set in the village of Chapelizod, near Dublin, in the 1760s the story opens with the accidental disinterment of an old skull in the churchyard, and an eerie late-night funeral. This discovery relates to murders, both recent and historical whose repercussions disrupt the complacent pace of village affairs and change the lives of many of its notable characters forever.